First of all, love this show. This is my first exposure to it and it was a great watch! Second, I was wondering if this 100% falls into the public domain? I was hoping to use some of the footage and audio from this episode in a project I was working on and wanted to make 100% sure that I wasn't using anything I'm not supposed to.

Thanks for uploading these episodes! My grandparents were on this show in April of 1959 or 1960 and I'm really hoping to find a copy of the episode to give as a gift in the next year or so.

Do you have any other archived episodes? Or even if you could point me in the right direction looking for other episodes, that would be great!

Thanks!

Beat the Clock was a TV game show that involved participants performing wacky tasks while a large clock counted down from 60 seconds. The show began its run in 1950 on CBS and was moved to ABC in 1958 and ran there until 1961. The show was revived multiple times on various networks in 1969, 1979, 2002, and with a new, all-kids version in 2018 . This particular episode is one of the originals, aired on CBS in August 1956 .
The original Beat the Clock was one of many popular game shows of this era, which were family-friendly programs that people of all ages could enjoy. This show, like many others of its day, was corporately sponsored. The initial sponsor at the start of the show was Sylvania, an electronics company . The sponsor at the time of this episode, and beginning in May 1956, was Fresh, a deodorant and soap company. The sponsorship of the episode is very evident, being referenced multiple times throughout the course of the episode and the couples are given a gift box, sampling Fresh products.
The production seamlessly integrates the sponsor’s message into the program with prizes and plugs for the product throughout the entire episode. In one case, the host, Bud Collyer, transitions from a task that required the participant to utilize balance directly into a plug for Fresh by stating that staying fresh and clean is a balancing act too. The in-show ad shows a male acrobat balancing on a crate atop a rolling cylinder as Collyer narrates the how “keeping fresh is a matter of delicate balance” as the acrobat begins to spin rings on his arms as he continues to balance atop the rolling crate .
The goal of the game show was for the participants to complete the task before time ran out to win prizes. The participants were couples, pre-selected from the audience that performed their own series of tasks individually. Each couple had to perform two tasks as a team as well as individual tasks, with the husband alone performing the final, grand-prize task. The “wacky tasks” for the first couple in this episode include covering wind-up toy cars with boxes and rolling a ball across a table impeded by hands coming up from the surface of the table. As the couple proceeds through the tasks, they rack up prize money the more they successfully complete the tasks, beginning with a $100 prize.
Both husband and wife also performed individual tasks as well. The husband attempted to balance a wooden peg attached to a fishing pole apparatus atop a flat-top helmet on his head for the grand prize and the wife had to re-arrange a scrambled phrase to say, “All that glitters is not gold.” The husband’s task decided whether the group would win the “super-bonus” prize of $53,000, while the wife’s task decided whether the couple would win a refrigerator. The second and third couples featured in the episode perform similarly ridiculous tasks, with the final two individual tasks being the same for the husbands and wives. The super-bonus prize remained the same, but the wife’s prize was a stove.
Many aspects of the show speak to it reflecting the time in which it was aired; the 1950s. The show’s choice of contestants, hosts, and assistants were all white people, and the couples were all straight. This lack of diversity in television was very common in the 1950s. The show also paints men as bread winners, having their individual task be reliant on winning the grand prize of $53,000, while the woman’s individual task decided whether the couple would win a kitchen appliance. This paints women as only having domestic interests speaking to the patriarchal nature of the 1950s society and its expectations of women.
The show Beat the Clock is one of many family-friendly programs of the quiz show era that were designed to be enjoyed by those of all ages. The ridiculousness of the tasks added an element of comedy to the show’s competitive nature that allowed it to be casual and fun to watch. The production of the show created excitement with the sound effects used, just as many game shows do in modern day. Most significant is the constant ticking of the clock as the contestants are performing the tasks, which created anxiety for the participants as well as the audience as the loud ticking of the clock became an ever-present reminder of the time limit they were racing against. The production also utilized music in the evoking emotions for the audience. For most tasks the only sound was the clock ticking and the audience’s laughter, but not for the grand prize task. The super-bonus, grand prize task still had the ticking of the clock, but also utilized suspenseful music that built tension as the contestant struggled to beat the clock and win the grand prize.
Beat the Clock was one of the front-runners in the game show era of the 1950s and 1960s. The show provided wholesome television content for American families of the day and pioneered elements of game shows that are still seen today. It provides a view into cultural norms of the day as well as the outdated form of corporate sponsored television programs.